Source - http://www.bloomberg.com/
By - Makiko Kitamura
Category - Balboa Park San Diego
Posted By - San Diego Hampton Inn
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| Balboa Park San Diego |
A new technique for measuring
consciousness offers a reliable way to guide treatment of
patients with brain injuries who can’t respond to commands,
according to a study.
By using a device that shakes the entire brain with strong
magnetic stimulation, researchers led by a team at University of
Milan in Italy measured the amount of information flow occurring
in the brain. They were able to discriminate between various
levels of consciousness with a numerical index they developed.
The study was published today in Science Translational Medicine.
The technique may be particularly useful in assessing
improvements in patients in intensive-care units who have low
levels of consciousness, for which no objective measure exists,
resulting in high rates of incorrect diagnoses, said Marcello
Massimini, one of the study authors. With the brain stimulation
technique, they found that such patients actually had much
higher levels of consciousness than subjects who were sleeping
or were anesthetized, he said.
“It will be very important to perform measurements right
in the ICU in the acute phase to have an objective marker of
what’s happening and to track improvements occurring
spontaneously or brought about by treatment,” Massimini said in
a phone interview. “If you have a number, you can start working
towards an evidence-based treatment.”
Vegetative States
The method was tested on 52 subjects including healthy ones
while they were awake, sleeping, and under anesthesia, and also
on brain-injured patients who had emerged from a coma.
“Measures that can reliably distinguish vegetative states
from minimally conscious states are crucial and will have an
impact on clinical practice,” said Nicholas Schiff, a professor
of neurology and neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College
in New York, in a comment accompanying the paper. “Misdiagnosis
rates are high when behavioral evidence of consciousness is
limited.”
The researchers used a trans-cranial magnetic stimulation
device made by Nexstim, based in Helsinki, Massimini said. The
device also records electrical responses of the brain induced by
the stimulation pulses. Brainsway Ltd. (BRIN) of Jerusalem also
produces a TMS device for treating neurological conditions such
as depression.
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